


A Changing Wind (Wearing Thin the Heart Beneath)

by ababybat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kylo Ren Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 08:37:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13678152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ababybat/pseuds/ababybat
Summary: Ben Solo would have disappointed her, as he’d disappointed everyone else he’d ever claimed to care about. But maybe, just maybe, Kylo Ren and his final act of desperate but devoted love would be enough.Please for once let it be enough.





	A Changing Wind (Wearing Thin the Heart Beneath)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the horrible thing my brain came up with when someone said they'd like it if Kylo took out The First Order from the inside.

All around Kylo was chaos. The violent, frightening kind of pandemonium he’d always been so damn good at creating even when he really, truly, honestly hadn’t meant to. The kind he could only sit back and quietly breathe in as it raged around him like a turbulent storm no one could run from. But the shame that followed him whenever he screwed up, nipping at his heels like a starved, salivating beast sprung from his perverted conscience, wouldn’t steal a bite of him this time. This time satisfaction would be the only thing Kylo would feel before oblivion finally came for him.  
  
He was good at destroying things – always had been – and it was finally time to put that particular skill to good use.     
  
Panicked screaming from officers, support staff, soldiers, and other non-essential personnel blended in with the ship’s cacophonous alarms to create a disharmonious and frightfully loud symphony that was truly beautiful to Kylo.  
  
“You fool! You’ve doomed us all! Our cause – _my cause_ \- won’t end here! I refuse to let it end here!” Hux screeched. His pallid cheeks were flushed an unflattering red; his once immaculately styled hair was wild and tousled from the ship’s forceful quaking.  
  
Hux looked infuriated, driven mad from anger and grief, and when he pulled the blaster out from the behind his long coat, it was so very predictable that Kylo almost laughed.  
  
A simple flick of Kylo’s wrist pulled the blaster from his rival’s hand. It flew in a lazy circle around the bridge before hitting the back of Hux’s head so hard he stumbled forward and then fell to his knees.  
  
Petty payback for all the times Hux gleefully witnessed Kylo’s own humiliation at Snoke’s cruel hands.  
  
“I should have won!” Hux spat. His voice cracked underneath the weight of his failures. “I deserved to win!”  
  
“It’s never been about what we deserve,” Kylo muttered, more to himself than the man laughing hysterically at his feet.  
  
Hux had certainly believed he would win this long and bitter battle between them. When Kylo had summoned the traitorous General and his allies to his newly commissioned flagship, the _Ascension_ , Hux had quite happily heeded the call. Equipped with the self-assured knowledge that his carefully planned coup would finally come to fruition, he’d walked right into a trap. Hux had been so very confident that he would finally be rid of his rival once and for all that he’d been completely blind to what was really happening until it was simply too late.  
  
Hux and anyone who could’ve rallied the fractured remains of The First Order were all going to die in a blinding inferno right alongside their despised leader, and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it.  
  
Kylo had made very sure of that.  
  
Turning away from Hux, Kylo looked out of the observation window so he could face his long-awaited end head on.  
  
His breath snagged in his throat at the incredible view before him. The Ascension was beginning to enter the planet’s atmosphere; flames - a violent surge of red, orange, and yellow - licked a path up along the ship’s glossy hull as the colossal vessel hurled down, down, down, with increasing speed.  
  
It would be over soon, and Kylo was grateful even as sorrow and regret made him tremble. He had no idea what awaited him in the afterlife, if there even really was such a thing. He had no idea if this final act of defiant, violent repentance would be enough to grant his tormented soul some kind of absolution, or if forgiveness could only be granted to one Skywalker at a time and if, unlike his grandfather, he’d simply fade into nothingness, a burst of stardust among thousands more. Either way, Kylo was ready for it to end.  
  
Then he felt it - the static charge in the air around him, the way everything around him seemed to mute and slow down to a crawl when the bond activated.  
  
Kylo hadn’t planned for her to be there in his final moments, and he wasn’t sure if he considered it a gift or a curse.  
  
“Ben?”  
  
He shuddered at the sound of his name. Rey hadn’t called him that in months; she hadn’t called him _anything_ in months.  
  
“Ben? Ben, what have you done!?”  
  
Kylo could feel her confusion and horror bleed through their connection, and when he turned his head to look at her, to reassure her, he wasn’t prepared for the distress painted across her pretty features.  
  
“I’m fixing things,” Kylo answered. Behind him, Hux laughed and screamed about how he’d gone mad while talking to ghosts. If only that were true.  
  
Kylo Ren had never felt more in control of his sanity in his life.  
  
“Not like this! It wasn’t supposed to be like this! You were supposed to help me! You were supposed to...” Rey hiccoughed, “not _this_ , Ben.”  
  
She visibly trembled through her anguish and Kylo wanted to reach for her the same way she’d once reached for him. He didn’t. Kylo knew better now.    
  
How could he even begin to tell the girl of his dreams that the person she thought she was maybe sort of in love with never even existed.  
  
Ben Solo had never been much of a hero to anyone or anything. He was – _weak and foolish, like his father, so I destroyed hi_ \- quiet, painfully shy at times, and often so moody, so sullen, that it eventually frightened good natured people and would-be friends away.  
   
Ben Solo would have disappointed her, as he’d disappointed everyone else he’d ever claimed to care about. But maybe, just maybe, Kylo Ren and his final act of desperate but devoted love would be enough.  
  
_Please for once let it be enough._  
  
“Ben,” Rey whined through her tears, and how unfair it was that this would be their final conversation.  
  
The bond had remained during the months since Crait, flickering to life whenever it damn well pleased.  
  
Neither of them knew how to control it, but that didn’t mean they were completely at the mercy of its vindictive and random whims. Kylo had learned the hard way that Rey of Jakku was very, _very_ good at ignoring the people she considered undeserving of her time and affections.  
  
When Kylo blinked into existence, Rey would stubbornly go about her business as if he’d never been there at all.  
  
As for Kylo himself, he wouldn’t force his presence upon her. He knew it was unwelcome, and while he’d greedily drink in the sight of her, like a man dying of thirst in the middle of a desert and she were an oasis, not once did he call out to her or beg her to listen to him.  
  
Kylo wouldn’t humiliate himself like that ever again. He’d begged before when he’d asked her to join him, the _please_ a painfully unfamiliar spark of hope on his tongue that soon tasted of ashes when Rey chose them over him.  
  
Not that Kylo blamed her anymore, of course. Now that the dust had settled and his hysterical mind had calmed, Kylo had come to understand a fundamental truth he could no longer deny: someone like Rey would never choose someone like him.  
  
_You’re a monster._  
  
_Yes, I am._  
  
_I am what they made me._  
  
No one wanted him. No one good had _ever_ wanted someone as obviously weak and damaged as him.  
  
Kylo wouldn’t have chosen himself, either.  
  
But there was something Kylo knew he could still do with this ignoble existence of his.  
  
Repent. Repent. Repent.  
  
Burn it down.  
  
He was going to die soon, anyway. Whether from a concealed blade sinking into his back or upon an executioner’s block, his end was near.  
  
At least this way his death would mean something.  
  
At least this way Kylo had a say in how it would end. To him, that meant something.

_I’m not afraid to die._  
  
“Ben! Ben, don’t! Please!”  
  
_Please don’t go this way, Ben._  
  
“It’s okay,” he breathed. “Everything will be better now. You’ll see.”  
  
Kylo wanted to call her _sweetheart_ , but he figured it wouldn’t be appreciated. He swallowed the endearment down and felt it carve a bloody path down his throat.  
  
The ship’s vicious shuddering had grown so much worse. The sound of metal squealing as it was ripped apart cut out the screaming. The pulsating alarms. Rey’s sweet, but frightened voice.  
  
Kylo didn’t close his eyes. He stared, absolutely fascinated, at the growing inferno around his ship; at the final decision he would ever make.  
  
_You’ve done well, kid_ , Kylo imagined someone saying. It sounded a lot like his father, and yet somehow not at all.  
  
_They’ll love you now._  
  
Ben smi—

**Author's Note:**

> To be clear, this is the exact opposite of what I want from EPIX. I want Ben Solo to live! I want him to make good choices, for himself and for Rey. I want him to find value in his own existence for himself more than for anyone else. But I couldn't get this idea out of my head and I am nothing if not a slave to my muses. Plus I love Kylo Ren. A lot. Too much, really.


End file.
